Another ride through German side of Šumava. This time “halb und halb”, half on the Czech side, half in Germany. This time only a short path was really steep uphill but in the end a nice reward of a long ride downhill. A very short part of this trip is on the side of a busy highway – if you do not miss the turn onto an abandoned road at point 2. The part of this map is marked as “No entry for bikes”, but no sign like that exists in the reality and you can safely follow the red and later green tourist mark through point 3. At point 5 the map will try to lead you through the town of Philipsreuth, but you can avoid that and take a shortcut from 5 to 6 on the road. After point 7 you will be on the nice local and forest roads all the way back to Strážný. You may be surprised by the sharp change of the surface at point 8 and afterward with the steep climb to point 9.
At point 12 you will be wondering what the path on your left is – it is a track for roller-skaters. Unfortunately, we did not see anybody there… Another point worth stopping is 13, where you may see how the border with Germany looked during the existence of the “Iron curtain“. Lots of people lost their lives trying to cross it over the years back then. (At that time the popular jokes ran like this: Mother and son are looking at the fence and the boy says – “Mom, who lives behind this terrible fence?” And mom responds – “We are son, we are…”)
After point 13 you will enjoy the long ride down on a very smooth surface where you could easily go too fast, so, don’t. And at the point 15 you may stop at the refreshment point where you should try the beer “Březí koza” (Pregnant goat), which I consider the best in Šumava. And back at Strážný you can be again shopping for dwarfs and bird feeders…
https://en.mapy.cz/s/mufohafode 40.6 km, 720 m elevation gain. To see this ride in context, check our interactive maps.
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